The Responsibility of Women

Women look down on the sexuality of men. This is a grand generalisation and in the past I have shirked away from making it. But here it is. I am saying it now.

Here is my two pennies on this whole issue. Women think that men are by nature unfaithful. That men are at the mercy of an uncontrollable sexuality, which needs to be managed and understood and at times manipulated. On the other side of the coin, men grow up thinking that they have something inside them that is wrong, that is shameful, too powerful. Most men grow up scared of themselves.

I believe this puzzle is at the heart of the masculine stereotype. You either become apologetic for your sexuality, or you simply become shameless and disregarding of the sexuality of others, in particular women. 

This is the root of the nice guy/ass hole problem. Neither is healthy, because both are evolved to mask the shame that men are taught to feel about their own sexuality, and the shame with which society brands the masculine drive.

What's most annoying about the post-feminist pop culture crap around masculinity, is that it paints men as essentially animalistic creatures. Whatever the personality, they are all the same.

Now ladies, whether you admit it or not, I don't care. I'm passed caring quite frankly. It is my experience that you all hold to this damning idea of men, because it has been handed down to you by culture, by your mothers, by countless Madonna MTV videos, by a society which cannot stand to recognise the nuance of masculine energy.

That's why I can't abide what I call post-feminism; the girl-power-Tomb Raider-“Who Run This...”-Beyoncee malaise. It's just bullshit piled upon bullshit and at the bottom of it is an archaic idea of masculinity.

This ancient idea stems from a fear of life itself. It comes from the primitive, God-fearing, Anglosaxon fear of existence. It is a direct descendant of Original Sin. It is part of the forces which drive humanity against itself.

At essence, the masculine energy is simply the energy of procreation. Men and women have it equally. However, in women it is tempered by other evolutionary needs. That is about as far as it goes. It's biology and there is nothing else to say on the matter. 

However, for thousands of years we have been taught to understand masculinity, and more specifically men, through the prism of spiritual shame. The very thing that affirms life, we are taught, is the very thing that which is a danger to us. This thing must be controlled. This thing must be disciplined. This energy of life, if it is left unleashed, is too dangerous and too meddlesome. It must be neutralised.

I believe that is why women look down on the sexuality of men. They shame it, and they ridicule it. Don't believe me? Am I making all this up? Watch a couple of episodes of Sex And The City, look closer at the gender prejudices exemplified in advertising. Listen to your own language around masculinity.

“All men are the same.” This is what it boils down to. I believe this is not just some jovial, innocuous statement to be taken lightly. It's a driving idea in the cultural subconscious. I wouldn't be so pissed off, if I hadn't heard it come from the lips of some of my more intelligent female friends.

Sometimes the law creates the crime. The more we entrench the belief, the more reality will start to form around this belief. If we treat masculinity as a scourge, if we shame it and solidify the idea that it is an unsophisticated, primitive energy that must be feared and controlled, then we perpetuate the very crimes of Patriarchy that we all claim to hate so much.

Women, it's time you examined your ideas around masculinity and asked yourself some tough questions. If you don't, you will castrate any further attempt on the part of men to evolve past the archaic memes of Patriarchal culture.